Andrea and I were at long last setting off on our ridge line traverse along the Kasiks and Khyex River divide. Our starting point would actually take us through the headwaters of four different rivers: Exchamsiks, Khutzeymateen, Kasiks and Khyex, but the bulk of the traverse would be along the Khyex-Kasiks divide. The focal point of the trip was to ascend Khyex Tower and I’ve put some detail about the genesis of this trip in the Khyex Tower write up here. On the evening prior we had flown in from Terrace on a Quantum Helicopters 206 Long Ranger and placed 3 food drops along the ridge. Our final drop off point was the col between Peak 1640 (Ataraxy Peak) and “Karma Peak” northeast of Mount Campagnolo. We had intended to climb up Karma Peak in the evening but the heli barely dropped us off before the clouds closed in.
The next morning we awoke to much better weather and we decided to start up with Karma Peak again. Armed with some day packs we made it up only 300m on the ridge before hitting a massive cleft some 20m deep and vertical on both sides. I found a bypass much further down the ridge, but we’d have to ascend more 4th and potentially 5th class terrain to gain the ridge. We came prepared with gear to tackle such a thing, but we lacked time. There was a big traverse a head of us and only so many weather days so we turned around and to pack up camp and head towards our primary goal of the trip.
After disassembling camp, we marched up the first minor summit to the South. Not officially named, but reasonably prominent: Ataraxy Peak. The ascent was relatively trivial with some easy scrambling to start and then a bit of steep snow to the top. As we crested over, we could see more of our traverse ahead and elation filled the air. I was bowled over by the endless steep, sometimes over hanging, granitic slabs that plunged to the valley floor. This terrain was like nothing I’d travelled in before. Andrea and I were both a bit anxious that we’d encounter something we couldn’t overcome, but thus far the terrain proved to be less foreign to travel on than we anticipated.
From the summit we scrambled down slabs and then onto steep snow which took us to the col for Peak 1770, which might more suitably be called Khutzeymateen Peak; given it’s location at the headwaters of the Khutzeymateen River.